Typically, corporate law departments, claims litigation departments and other businesses had to manually process and pay thousands of legal invoices, sometimes on a weekly basis. In a time consuming process, billing clerks received paper invoices, manually logged the invoice and forwarded them for processing by accounts payable. Once at accounts payable, invoices had to be routed for approval by appropriate personnel, such as a claim handler. In addition, the manual system allowed for very little, if any, analysis of the data contained in those invoices. Managers of these businesses had little control over the data and outcomes, and could never be sure whether they were properly being billed. Managers were never confident whether they were getting a good value for their money.
In addition, law firms were never sure when they would get paid for their services. A law firm's client, especially a large client, might hold onto an invoice for months before the invoice was manually approved by a client's claim handler. At that point, assuming the invoice was approved, the invoice would progress through the client's accounts payable system for payment at some later time. However, if the claim handler found an error in the invoice, whether minor, such as a misspelling of a claim handler's name, or major, such as an invalid case number, the invoice would be marked unsatisfactory, and at some later point, possibly additional months later, be sent back to the law firm. The law firm would then correct the invoice and resubmit the invoice to the client, beginning the process all over again. At best, the law firm might not receive payment for its services for at least a month, and at worst, the invoice could go unpaid for 6 months or more.
Attempts have been made to solve the above problems. Methods and systems of computerized billing and payment authorization have developed, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,671 to Crooks et al. Crook's system involves receiving billing information from a billing entity for a billable entity. The billable entity is provided with remote electronic access to the billing information and can electronically authorize payment of associated invoices. However, there is no guarantee that the authorization process will proceed in a timely fashion, since the authorization proceeds upon the time and terms of the billable entity.
An object of the present invention is to provide an unattended, instant, automated processing of invoices including an automated authorization to pay process.
Another object of the present invention is provide reporting tools to the billable party for managing billing party services.